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N ationa] machismo is compound- ed by the Soviets' deep-rooted puri- tanism, too, which, according to Dr. Khomasuridze, helps account for phe- nomenal rates of female frigidity and male impotence. "Do you know that some seventy per cent of our women have never had an orgasm?" he asked. "And that over half the Soviet women polled forthrightly state that they detest sexual contact? How can it be otherwise when parents are embarrassed to give their young the most basic infor- mation about sexuality, and our school system remains equally silent?" He added ad- miringly, "In your U.S.A., the rate of female frigidity is only thirty-four per cent." Dr. Khomasuridze went on to de- plore the dearth of commodities for female hygiene in his country. There are almost no sanitary napkins or tampons to be found in the Soviet Union; women must resort to wads of cotton or, on those very frequent occa- sions when pharmacies run out of cot- ton, carefully saved cotton rags. The Doctor has begged his "charitable Western friends" for ton loads of Modess and Tampax, and any he re- ceives he distributes as prodigally throughout Georgia as he does contra- ceptives. Yet there are a few incongruities in the outlook of this dauntless scientist who has dedicated his life to the health and happiness of women. Like many Soviet men, he is engaged in a dis- tressed reëvaluation of the emancipa- tion of women by the 1917 revolution, and he holds a deeply conservative view of their social roles. At the end of a four-hour visit, as the traditional feast of tea and Georgian pastries was brought into his office, I asked Dr. Khomasuridze if there were prejudices against women gynecologists in the Soviet Union. "Of course there are prejudices, as well there should be," he replied. "The brainier the woman, the more she tends to prefer men doctors, because our best specialists are clearly men. As you know, over seventy-five per cent of the Soviet doctors are women, but they just don't work well. Their children get sick, they take those days off, they - FEBRUARY 19, 1990 take more time off to have babies, they get behind in their research, they're useless to us." He continued, in a lecturing tone, "In every area of nature, in each spe- cies of animal and plant life, there is a specific function that is akin to a vo- cation, a calling. Snakes, say, must move by crawling on the ground. The clematis vine will only grow up a steep wall. And woman's first calling is to educate her family. Men will never be able to do it as well as women, never . You need that fine fe- male touch. What would be the future of the planet if women ceased to look on family as their first priority? Kaput! Here at this clinic, I have officially declared that I don't accept women doctors on my staff. Let them complain, let them feel abused . . ." The Doctor suddenly looked at me with a certain terror, perhaps aware that such views are not popular in the United States. "F orgive me, please forgive me. Of course, there may be some exceptions." I told him, per haps stonily, that he had already done a great deal for women. "Thank you, thank you," he said, still trying to pacify me. "I shall con- tinue to refuse employing women, for their own sake." I encountered this prejudice against women doctors throughout the Soviet Union, regardless of class or ethnic background, or even gender. "I gave birth to two children, one with a man doctor and another with a woman, and what a difference!" a jour- nalist in Irkutsk told me. "How much more powerful and gentler the man!" Even Olga Lipovskaya, the feminist editor, and one of the most prominent women's-rights activists in Leningrad (she deems herself the only one in the city), echoed this prejudice. "Soviet women doctors can carry the patriar- chal mentality more brutally than men. They're under great pressure to be even harsher." The abortion experiences of Olga Lipovskaya are precisely the kind that Dr. Khomasuridze wishes to eradicate from Soviet life. Olga is a wiry, beau- tifu] woman in her late thirties. She has been married three times, has two children, and has had seven abortions. She estimates that she will have had about fourteen abortions "before it's all e.